Word: goodwin
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...that first spring as President to proclaim the Great Society, to challenge the nation to use its "wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization." A few years later, the Great Society was gone from the presidential vocabulary and Richard Goodwin, who had written the speech, was gone from the White House...
...Goodwin's strategy is thus not flawless. He doesn't say it is. Someone stepped up at the end of his speech to ask where liberals should be reforming their ranks. "I don't know," said Goodwin, "if I did I'd be there...
...Goodwin discounts even such a goal as "taking over the Democratic Party". Winning the allegiance of the top party men who dominate the state organizations would not generate community organization. But he does see a chance of that organized both locally and nationally for a new party. "The closeness of the election only masks the fact that the Democratic Party is on the edge of collapse. People don't want what they've got." A new major party might succeed if you "could convince people you'll meet their needs...People must be willing to work, put in money...
Idealism is for Goodwin an eminently practical force. A party whose policy is generous and purposeful, whose leadership is high-minded rather than cynical--such a party, he thinks, would move people to action. "Optimism is grounded in the fact that people, if offered that kind of leadership, will respond...
...always wanted to write a play about the Pope and Galileo," Goodwin continues, "in which the Pope emerges as the hero. What difference does it make that we know the earth moves around the sun if it destroys our faith?" Technology must be accepted, but to generate the leadership and community organization capable of its control is the purpose of Richard Goodwin's rhetorical flourishes...